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Adoption #2: The Paperwork Trail

October 24, 2018

I am happy to report (and CELEBRATE) that today we sent all our dossier documents to our agency and last week we started immigration paperwork. If you speak China-adoption-language you know what a big (huge!) step this is, and if not I will translate for you…. we’re done with *most* of the paperwork (at least most of the really long forms and giant folders filled with documents).

To put it in perspective, what we just finished in three months took us eight months the first time around. What seemed like a mountain to climb during our first adoption seemed like a quick jog this time. I really felt my competitive side come out in wanting to “beat our old time”. It was kind of fun!

Anyway! I wanted to do a quick update on what has happened so far, and what will happen next.

In July we made an appointment with a local social worker to begin our home study on August 1st. I asked for the list of documents needed in advance and spent several weeks gathering them up so that we could turn them in on our first meeting in August.

Our favorite part was updating each of our autobiographies to include stories about our new life since adopting Nova. I cried… a lot. And then I cried again reading Jeremy’s.

After that I had just a few more documents to gather and we had our individual interviews and our home visit with our social worker, which are a part of the home study. The home visit was so different this time because Nova was with us and instead of spending the whole time talking about our dreams of becoming parents, we spent most of that time talking about our daily realities as Nova’s parents.

After our home study was written and approved by our social worker, we had to wait for our agency to approve it as well. We used this time to begin prepping the documents for our dossier, which is paperwork your agency submits to become approved to adopt by China.

My favorite part of the dossier prep was choosing photos. There are a lot of photos required to send to China- the inside and outside of your home, different rooms, a family portrait etc…. It was the most incredible feeling to print these out because it feels like just yesterday I printed them for our application to adopt Nova. And now with her in our family photo…. I was tearing up a little, of course.

So these past few weeks we mailed off our final paperwork that is necessary for our agency to be able to send our dossier to China in December (we aren’t allowed to send it until we’ve been home one year with Nova). And it feels good for all that to be completed!

Since the time when our home study was approved last month we have been technically eligible to match. I say technically because there are many families ahead of us waiting to be matched (our agency goes in order of how long each family has been waiting) so we are by no means expecting a phone call anytime soon.

We were told our wait could be any length from just a few months to a year or more. We feel completely fine with waiting any length of time since we obviously don’t want to wish away any of our time as a family of three. So at the moment we’re trying not to dwell too much on it.

For now, we’re kind of at a standstill with paperwork. There will be occasional things to do with the immigration part of it, but not a huge rush of to-dos until we are matched. Honestly- the timing is great because we’re looking forward to diving into holiday traditions with Nova and visiting our family who we miss so much.

I’m honestly kind of shocked by how much easier this second adoption has gone so far. Although I’m a little nervous typing that because I don’t want to jinx it.

I thought it would be so much more stressful since Nova takes up so much of our time and mental space. But as it turns out, just like with our careers being parents has made us more efficient. We know we have no spare time so we just hurry up and do the work. It’s actually been really helpful to just race though it- so thank you Nova!

Oh! And during our first adoption we would go on cute date nights to celebrate every milestone in our paperwork. Do you want to know where we went to “celebrate” tonight? Rainforest Cafe… Nova’s choice.

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JEREMY + ELSIE

We are Jeremy and Elsie Larson, homebodies and music lovers living in Nashville, TN. We are currently decorating our 1970s dream home and adopting a baby girl from China. Our simple goal here is to take more photos and videos of our life together.